What Happyns

My thesis project, titled What Happyns, is a video documentary, approximately 45 minutes in length, comprised largely of interviews recorded with attendees at the Stanley Park Lawn Bowling Club and the Plaza Skateboard Park, both located in Vancouver, B.C. This paper identifies three documentary film histories—the ethnographic, the quotidian and the essay— that have informed my project. A number of definitive filmic works within these histories are discussed in relation to the project, most importantly Chronique d’un été and Le joli mai. Other important context is provided by the work of Errol Morris and Ross McElwee, as well as by Michael Apted’s Up Series. The role of the interview in documentary film is examined, as are the key concepts around which What Happyns was constructed: our collective conception of happiness, especially its recent manifestation in the field of Positive Psychology, and Laura Rascaroli’s notion of the “interstitial space” as it is created by the deployment of voice-­‐over in an essay film. Emphasis is lent throughout to the emergent process often involved in the making of documentary films, and the thesis project is viewed, in conclusion, mainly as an essay film.